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January 26, 2018

Progress Update on LOTRO Basics & More (January 2018)

I wanted to give a quick update on my progress with LOTRO Basics. Note: After writing this, it exploded much more than I thought. This is a more major than quick update. I would love any feedback on any of the stuff in here!

I have a few things planned for early 2018 with LOTRO Basics including an expansion of this website and, well, hopefully more videos. For my full plans for 2018 please check out this video if you haven't seen it:

So, what is going on right now with the LOTRO Basics project?

I have had a lot of PC issues the past couple weeks. Everything has been fixable and (I think) fixed now. But, I lost all LOTRO Basics recordings in the process. These were all character character building trait guides.

I do have one episode I recorded that will likely be released sometime in the middle of February. This one will be related to VIP perks and premium.

My focus going forward with LOTRO Basics...

For the next month or so, I do not plan to focus on LOTRO Basics, but if I have time, I definitely will work on it. I have a few project ideas and plans for guides. One is a major project that I am making slow progress on, others are one-off guides and others are just general work on character building and gameplay guides. I also want to get back to streaming since it has been well over a month since I last did, so that is less time to work on guides. Right now I am working on finishing up my annual gameplay videos for LOTRO, WoW, and RIFT. So, the takeaway from this is I am working on LOTRO Basics, but it is not a high priority and in the immediate future on the backburner.

I am definitely excited for some upcoming content whenever it comes, though! When I have more details to share on specifics, I will.

* RK Red Line Gameplay Guide -- This is a video I want to make an updated and better version of. One of the lost recordings was a yellow line gameplay guide which was much better in nearly all aspects (at least, I think). I want to give a review of all the skills relevant to the line, going over their priority and strength (mini-rotation guide at the start). Then get into gameplay and show how it actually works out and about. If I have low levels of the class, go on them, too, and have a low level section at the end. It is important to note, and maybe I should make this more clear in the videos - most of these are geared towards a general player/leveler. These are not meant for raiders progressing through end-game content where situations are much different than a solo quester. Anyway, that is my thoughts on those. The trait builds have the same applications, they just focus on the traits and why I pick them instead. Right now, I am also wondering if it would be beneficial to include racial/virtue traits with the class trait build videos, or have them separate as initially planned. (Thoughts?)

How about the old LOTRO Basics from around 2015? I do plan on making updated version of most of these! I am most interested in updated the one-off videos on miscellaneous guides, but I would also love to go back over and do another set of beginner's guides (a thorough overview of getting started through finishing the tutorial and what to do once you are in the open world). This is low priority relative to the general LOTRO Basics project.

Non LOTRO Basics updates...

As I mentioned, I have had a lot of PC issues lately, so my progress on my content has been a bit slow. I have released my annual gameplay for LOTRO about 3 weeks later than usual, and still haven't gotten to any other games. School will be ramping up in its time consumption by next weekend, so that outlook isn't great for progress on videos. This weekend I likely won't be able to do much, either.

Mini-PC Update/Rant

One thing that excites me is that my PC appears to be working again, so I can get back to working on content and videos. I also ordered a new 2TB internal HDD (thanks to the YouTube money - which always goes back into the channel one way or another, this time a part upgrade), which I have been feeling the need for a while for. I currently have a 1TB HDD and 128GB SSD which holds my OS, LOTRO, and some programs. The current HDD had to hold a lot of pictures (~400 GB+), as photography is a little hobby of mine, all my non-LOTRO games, most of my programs that don't need SSD speeds, my music, and all my videos (recordings, final products, etc.). My channel resources could take up to 1TB of data itself at some points. An hour of recordings can be 20-30 GB, and edited and rendered videos being similar sized. My 2018 gameplay recordings took about 500 GB. Anyway, this got a bit out of control, but that is what is going on with my storage space...

I also found out my external HDD is 4TB, not 2TB like I thought. I use this for backup, and sometimes video editing when files/projects get too big (I've held about 1TB to actively work on before). I can also use this on my laptop I use for school, which handles editing surprisingly well (just slower on there vs desktop). So, I need to wipe this to be able to use the last 2TB and do some weird (to me) partition stuff. But this has everything backed up, and my current HDD is nearly empty since I had to wipe it to fix it. Now I need to wait for the new 2TB internal HDD to get here so I can use it to backup the external HDD so I can get more space on the external HDD to re-back everything up again on it. I am also not in 100% trust of my current internal HDD even though it appears to be fixed (has worked for a record 2 days after not working for one whole day and most of the past week). Even before all this, my SSD stopped working. Windows would not boot, I had to wipe the SSD. Most things were linked to my HDD but not everything, so I did lose some stuff (mainly program data and LOTRO, which I reinstalled). But a lot of things on my HDD stopped working even though only the SSD was wiped. I got windows reinstalled and most programs reinstalled that needed to be. That is when my HDD started having more issues (it was already starting to act up the ~month before then, but never got too bad).

So anyway, that was intended to be an update for the readers' purpose if they were interested... But it became a much needed rant.

TL/DR: PC annoying me. Couple weeks til back to normal and upgraded.

The Future

At the end here, I want to give you all a preview of what will be coming up in the future!

A guide on benefits retained after VIP runs out. Likely in a month or slightly less.

A more structured and future-oriented update on here regarding LOTRO Basics in 2018.

The project I have been working on. No ETA.

Other YT content including Loueyden the Warden, live streams, and 2018 gameplay videos!

Thanks, everyone, for reading! I hope it was maybe enjoyable or informative. If you have any suggestions on anything here, please comment and let me know! If you would also like to see more stuff like this, let me know. (What about channel updates unrelated to LOTRO Basics?)

Attribution

I own all media (including but not limited to videos, images, and audio) used in this unless otherwise stated/noted. Most videos and related can be found on my YouTube channel. Find more about this blog in the about tab above or this link. Questions, comments, feedback, et cetera? Message me on the other platforms linked around this blog, comment on this blog, comment on my YouTube channel, or reach me any other way.